When a cellular base station is newly deployed, the receiver gain is set to a desired level to achieve a desired sensitivity and allow various HW components to operate in the linear region. Due to the increase in popularity of wireless communications, more and more base stations are being deployed to increase capacity in cellular systems. This results in increased co-channel interference. The presence of interference can result in incorrect setting of the receiver gain, which affects the receiver sensitivity.
Prior receiver gain calibration methods identify noise power based on a minimum received power at a configured channel for a predetermined amount of time, such as the first 24 hours after a system is deployed. If an interfering signal is present for longer than 24 hours, the gain of RF front-end devices is estimated inaccurately. If the interfering signal disappears after the first 24 hours, incorrect received powers are reported. In either event, the gain may be incorrectly set.